After a brief rain and real-life induced hiatus, Hooniverse was back at Cars and Coffee, the informal car show put on way too early on Saturday Morning down in Orange County.
There were several Porsches and several Corvettes. Some were special, many were not. In our humble opinion, they should’ve parked directly across from each other and gotten into a massive fight. Would’ve given us something to talk about…

In place of the Country Sedan, we chose a more compact offering from Ford of the ’60s.
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As long as we’re talking Ford, one of my favorite cars there was this Ford Fairlane Thunderbolt (or a really good clone?). When talking about stonking powerplants in midsize cars, the Thunderbolt takes the GTO’s lunch money five days a week.
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Not a Ford, but Ford powered, this ’72 DeTomaso Pantera is easily the cleanest, classiest example I’ve ever seen. Typically, they’re some crappy ’70s mustard yellow with too many wings and air dams and the like. Not the case, here:
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Using beautiful glossy black paint and powered-by-someone-else as a segue, this Studebaker caught our eye with its paint, but widened it with its powerplant. Bentley? Huh?
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Venturing towards the rear of the lot, we saw this matte-gold painted, 24″ rimmed, non-functionally scooped Challenger, an exercise in subtle, understatement.
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We chose to cleanse our eyes by checking out a nearby Mach 1, complete with Hurst-shifted 4-speed. While we were shooting, a “Macho T/A” TransAm cruised in. Mach-O Vs Mach 1, may the best overgrown pony car win!
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If, while cruising around Southern California, a young man in a Mercedes Benz with odd headlights and an exhaust note that doesn’t seem quite right challenges you to a race, do not take him up on it. It could go quite embarrassingly for you.
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In case you’re looking for another reason why the BMW e9 Coupes are so rad, I submit this 3.8CSi with four. headlight. wipers. That, and a 3.8L stroker motor constructed using almost all BMW parts from different years of the M30. You know a car’s awesome when it’s got its own website.
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While we’re talking gorgeous Europeans, here’s some Ferrari pr0n. Notice anything funny about that 250?
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At Hooniverse, we loves us some domestically-powered Euro-styled rides. Thus, two Isos and a Ghia L6.4:
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Lastly, we noticed something funny in the bed of this VW pickup (awesome in its own right). Turns out it’s a VW-engined fire fighting water-pump. Guess that makes this truck rear and mid-engined!
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…aaaaand here’s the miscellanea, including a sweet black/white NSX, Dora the Studebaker, and an Avanti:
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Be sure to check out the much more extensive (and better shot) galleries over at CnCPics.com, maybe even buy a few for that Chrysler 300 (the good ones) fan in your life.